The Line Book One: Carrier

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The Line Book One: Carrier Page 17

by Anne Tibbets


  I ran out the door. I couldn’t stand the pressure. It squeezed my chest until I couldn’t feel myself breathing.

  After getting a grip, I came back inside to find Sonya in another blue screen. She’d made it partway through the air ducts and was sliding along like a worm on her belly, a tiny flashlight in her mouth lighting the way.

  When she reached what appeared to be a dead end, Sonya took out the socket wrench and unscrewed the grate blocking her way. It fell off and disappeared without a sound.

  “Sending it your way. Coming from above,” Tym said. He noticed me peering over his shoulder. “Feeling all right?”

  “Just nervous.”

  “There’s a bucket under that table over there I use for old circuit boards. Dump it out and hang onto it in case you need it. It’s not safe for you to be alone outside.”

  “Okay.”

  “Here it comes,” Tym said, his attention back on the screens. “Less than three.”

  “I see it,” Sonya whispered.

  I walked over to the table Tym had indicated and found an old wooden bucket full of plastic green rectangles covered in tiny cubes and wires.

  “Careful dumping those out. They don’t make them anymore and they’re hard to come by. Okay, Sonya. The elevator has stopped on the level below. You have three seconds... Wait, someone just pushed the button. Go!”

  On the screens, Sonya slid out of the air duct onto the top of an elevator without a sound. The elevator moved up, and Sonya disappeared from view.

  “Where’d she go?” I panicked.

  “No cameras in the elevator shaft. We’re dark until she appears at the bottom and gets back into the air duct system.”

  “It’s going up!” Sonya whispered. It was strange to hear her and not see her. She was like some disembodied ghost floating through the warehouse.

  “Can’t be helped,” Tym said, his fingers flying feverishly over the keyboard. “If I override, it might raise suspicions. Once we drop off the passenger, I’ll get you to the sub-basement without interruption.”

  She sighed.

  I stacked the circuit boards carefully on the concrete floor where the bucket had been and took it back with me to stand behind Tym. My stomach seemed fine at the moment, but I didn’t want to risk a flare-up.

  “A’right,” Tym said. “Hang tight, we’re headed down.”

  “Oh God.” My nerves were shot and my stomach made an audible grumble.

  Tym chuckled. “Fourth floor.”

  “How can you tell without cameras?” I asked.

  Tym pointed to a map in the top right corner of the screens. “Up there. See that red dot?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s the elevator.”

  “Ah.”

  “You’re at the basement, girl. One more.”

  “Damn, it’s cold,” Sonya whispered.

  “And...stop.” Tym’s fingers flew some more. “Sixty seconds.”

  We heard the whirring of the electric screwdriver and a couple of pings as the screws from the grate hit the roof of the elevator.

  “Air duct loop in place. You’re clear.”

  Suddenly, Sonya appeared out of blackness and into one of the blue screens on the right side of the wall.

  “We have visual,” he said.

  “How’s my ass look from there?” she asked, clamping the tiny flashlight back into her teeth and crawling along.

  “Can’t tell,” he said, sounding disappointed. “We’re seeing you from the wrong angle. But from the looks of things, your nose hairs could use a trim.”

  Sonya stifled a laugh. She caught the flashlight as it dropped from her mouth, just before it hit the floor of the air duct.

  Tym’s face fell. “Sorry.”

  She shook her head as if to say it was no big deal, but I could tell he was shaken. If Sonya had been heard, not only was she dead, but the rest of us soon after.

  “Go left,” Tym said.

  At an air duct intersection, Sonya nodded and slithered past one screen and reappeared in another.

  “Second grate. Yes, that one.” He typed hard against the keyboard still in his lap. “Loop in place. Go.”

  Sonya took out her socket wrench and loosened the screws of the grate on the floor of the air duct just in front of her. When all four screws were the majority of the way out, she slid closer and used her fingers to guide the grate out to keep it from falling to the floor.

  Carefully, she turned the grate sideways and brought it up into the air duct, resting it on the other side of the opening. She then shimmied forward, pushing the grate ahead, and slithered over the opening until her feet were above the hole. Then, bending at the hips, Sonya lowered her feet into the opening and slid out, being sure to hold on to the edge of the hole with her hands. It was so graceful and utterly silent I was amazed.

  Sonya had disappeared from one blue screen and reappeared into another one on the opposite side of the wall. I could tell instantly that it was a server room because it looked almost exactly like Tym’s warehouse, only clean, better organized and had thick, soundproof padding along the walls and ceiling.

  Floor-to-ceiling cabinets lined every square inch of the walls and held rectangular black boxes. The black double doors leading to the rest of the sub-basement were barely visible behind Sonya. In the middle of the room were shelves and shelves of more back-to-back black boxes, stacked two cubes deep. The room couldn’t have been any bigger than Tym’s lair but housed twice as many hard drives and seemed more like a maze than a room.

  Sonya moved silently around the aisles, counting shelves. She’d taken the flashlight from her mouth and held it in her hand.

  Tym’s breath had quickened. “There.”

  Sonya put the flashlight down and whipped her backpack off. She rummaged around for a second and pulled out a small black hard drive, then flicked open the connector and inserted it into a black cube’s port.

  “How did you...?” I started, but Tym shushed me.

  “Starting upload,” she whispered. “Twelve minutes to go.”

  “Holy shit,” I breathed. I knew Doc had said twelve minutes was too long, and at the time I’d disagreed, silently, and thought that twelve minutes had sounded rather reasonable. But he’d been right. Twelve minutes was a long time to stand in the middle of a room and hold a tiny black box plugged into another black box.

  Anything could happen in twelve minutes.

  The rest of the screens suddenly caught my attention. I’d been watching Sonya and hadn’t paid any attention to the others. But now I understood their importance.

  Guards walked in and out of view at an alarming rate. At any moment, one could appear, and the whole plan would be shot.

  My stomach churned and I felt a rise of bile.

  “Eleven minutes,” Sonya whispered.

  I threw up in the bucket.

  Tym grimaced but didn’t say a word.

  I backed up and stood by the door. I hadn’t meant to vomit right beside Tym’s ear, but that was exactly what I’d done.

  “Doc,” he said. “Baby bird is blowing chunks.”

  “How many times?” Doc asked through the speakers.

  I’d forgotten he was listening to everything from atop his motorcycle at the pick-up location.

  “Just once so far,” Tym said. “In my ear.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Get her some water,” Doc said.

  Tym shook his head as if Doc could see him. “Can’t leave the screens.”

  “If she dehydrates, she could lose the babies.”

  My stomach did a somersault. “I can get it.”

  “It’s outside,” Tym said. “But you shouldn’t be out there alone.”

  “Ten minutes,” Sonya whis
pered.

  I inched toward the door. “I’ll be fine.”

  “No,” Tym insisted.

  “If she vomits again she doesn’t have a choice,” Doc’s voice sounded from the speaker.

  “Really, it’s fine. Just tell me where it is,” I said.

  “Forget it,” Tym barked, losing patience. “Just breathe through your mouth and chill. We’re almost there.”

  I stood quietly for a few moments, concentrating on my breathing, but the smell of the bucket was getting to me. With no sink to rinse it out, the vomit sitting at the bottom seemed to grow in stench by the second. I fought to keep my stomach calm, but my reflex got the best of me and I retched again.

  Tym groaned. “All right, all right. Outside, down the stairs. Hang a right. Back door leads to another door on the right. In there is my bedroom. Water is in the little fridge. And rinse out the bucket while you’re there. Cripes, that’s potent.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Smells like rotten syrup.”

  “Nine minutes,” Sonya whispered.

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  “Forget it, baby bird.” Tym’s eyes never left the gathering of screens. “I got bigger fish to fry.”

  I went out the door and tiptoed down the stairs. It was cooler in the warehouse. Wrapping the army jacket tightly across my chest, I headed to the back door, which I’d thought before to be an exit.

  Through the door was a long hallway. The floor had bright orange industrial carpet, and the walls didn’t look like they’d been painted in at least twenty years.

  On the right I found the door leading to Tym’s room. It was unlocked.

  Inside, there was a decent-sized room with a sofa, viewing screen on the wall across from it, a deep sink, a countertop with an electric skillet sitting on top and a small, dented refrigerator that seemed too small to hold more than a stick of butter.

  A glass pitcher full of cool water was inside. I rummaged around the only cupboard and found a glass. I had two glasses of water and put the rest back into the refrigerator.

  On the other side of the room from the couch was what I took to be Tym’s bed. It was small and unmade. Above it, there was a shelf of stacked colored papers. I couldn’t help myself and went over to see what they were.

  When I reached up and took one down, I was surprised at the weight of it. It was about one hundred pieces of paper, bound together in the middle. There were various-sized boxes of colored pictures inside and some guy wearing a blue suit with a giant “S” on his chest flying around. Characters in the book spoke in little white bubbles.

  I wanted to stay and read a few of them, but the fact that Sonya was still in the server room in Auberge headquarters pulled me out. I was in the hallway before I realized I’d left the bucket in the deep sink.

  I went back inside to retrieve it when I heard shouting.

  Dropping the bucket of vomit on the floor, I ran from Tym’s bedroom and down the hall. Inside the heart of the warehouse I could hear Tym shouting.

  “East wall, Sonya! East! Your other east!”

  I bounded up the stairs and yanked open the door to Tym’s liar.

  Tym was out of his seat and standing in front of the screens. His chair was tipped over on its side.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “What’s happening?”

  Tym didn’t answer. He flung windows around the screens like a symphony conductor. “Two seconds, girl!”

  “Five minutes left!” Sonya whispered.

  “Forget it. Get out!”

  “Four minutes—now it says four!”

  “Sonya!” Doc yelled over the speakers.

  From the server room window on the screens, Sonya stood right where I’d seen her last, holding the data box to the hard drive. But she was sweating, and her eyes darted about the room as if she was surrounded by a swarm of hornets.

  “Three minutes, forty-five seconds!” she whispered.

  Tym pointed to a window on the screens as if she could see the guard rounding the corner toward the server room. “Sonya, get out!”

  With one hand holding the data box and the other the server cube, Sonya pushed the cube deeper into the shelf, sending the server box directly behind it to the floor with a crash.

  “Sonya!” Tym yelped.

  She rested her data box onto the shelf to free her hands, then rummaged in her backpack, slipping the screwdriver and socket wrench into the sides of her pants, which was tricky, considering she had no pockets and the pants were skin-tight. Then Sonya crossed the room and tied her backpack around the handles of the double doors, knotting them together.

  “Guard in ten seconds!” he bellowed. His hands shot to his head in panic and his hat fell to the floor.

  The guard had obviously heard the crash of the server cube and was running toward it.

  Sonya ran back to the data box and read the timer. “Two minutes.”

  Tym was shouting. “Not good, girl! Get out! Get out!”

  Doc was yelling too. “Now! Get out now!”

  “Leave the box!” Tym bellowed.

  She appeared reluctant to leave. “They’ll trace it back to you!”

  Tym looked as if he could have used the bucket himself. He was deathly pale. “We’re all dead anyway if you don’t get the hell out of there!”

  The doors to the server room shook back and forth, but the knotted backpack held. For the moment.

  Sonya checked the timer. “One minute, forty-five.”

  I couldn’t hold my tongue a moment longer. I knew she probably couldn’t hear me, but I shouted, “Sonya, please!”

  My voice hit her like electricity.

  She ran around the aisles and swiftly got under the open air grate, snatched two fallen screws from the floor and jumped up, grabbing the ledge of the open air grate with her hands, and pulled herself up. Once she had one knee in, she flung around and snatched the grate from the other side, whipping out the socket wrench and screwing one screw half in place, then the other. She slithered down the air duct like a greasy snake just as the guard burst through the server room doors.

  Tym gathered his chair from the floor and started flinging windows around, canceling loops and pulling up the timer from the data box.

  Fifty seconds.

  There was no sound from the server room without Sonya’s earpiece, but I saw the guard place his index finger to his earlobe and compress a black button. He was talking fast. I could just make out the words “server room.” He grabbed Sonya’s backpack and dug through it. He pulled out a laser cutter. The guard had unknowingly kicked the flashlight under a shelf.

  Tym cussed. “Her DNA is on that flashlight.”

  Doc swore from the speakers.

  “Elevator is all the way up on the thirtieth floor, Sonya. You’ll have to climb.”

  “Gotcha.” She slid from the air duct into the elevator shaft and disappeared from view.

  Tym set to work on the windows, verifying where all the guards were and checking the data box timer.

  Thirty seconds.

  The guard in the server room was inspecting the fallen cube on the floor and hadn’t yet noticed the data box on the other side.

  Sonya breathed hard through the speakers as she booked through the vents at record speed.

  Occasionally, Doc let a swear word slide off his lips.

  Tym closed all loops to the window screens in the sub-basement air ducts but kept the one for the server room open.

  The guard picked up the broken server and tried to see where it had come from. The shelves above were full. He held the broken server and followed around to the other side of the shelf just as another guard came in with a team of people wearing white coats. They were screaming at each other.

  Twenty seconds.


  The guard noticed the disheveled cubes and then the data box. He didn’t rip it from the server, but inspected it and wrote into his tablet the serial number off the cube.

  Fifteen seconds.

  The guard left the data box plugged in and turned around, looking square into the security camera.

  “Shit,” Tym said.

  The guard touched the earpiece and mouthed a few words I couldn’t make out.

  Twelve seconds.

  The guard reached over and unplugged the data box just as the timer reached eleven seconds.

  Then all the windows went black, and we were engulfed in complete darkness. The light from the screens had been our only beacon. I heard a click and saw Tym standing at his desk, his fingers lingering on a desk lamp.

  “Sonya, they know you’re in there and they know I’ve been watching. It won’t take long for them to trace it back to me. Minutes, even. You left the laser cutter in the backpack so you can’t cut through the conference room window to get out. You’ll have to find another way. Doc, you can’t wait there. Any minute now the guards are going to lock that place down. You’re suspicious, and I doubt a pedigree will help you now. Head to the rendezvous point. Baby bird and I will meet you there.”

  Sonya and Doc both answered at the same time. “Copy that.”

  Then Tym reached down where the wall met the floor and ripped a power cord right out of the socket.

  Now, even the lamp was dead. The low hum from the servers clicked once then came to a halt. We stood in silent stillness. My gasping breaths echoed in the quiet of the warehouse.

  Tym was beside me, searching in the dark for my hand. “Come on, baby bird,” he said. “Time to fly.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tym held my hand as we ran for the door. How he knew where to find it in complete darkness, I wasn’t sure. But I followed him.

  We burst into the main room of the warehouse, thundered down the stairs and went to Tym’s room. He grabbed an old canteen on a strap, which he draped over my shoulder, and a tablet, which he put into a satchel and slung over his own shoulder.

  Then we were out in the alley, running. It was midmorning, and the air was still thick with low clouds, making everything milky. In between each graffiti-covered warehouse was an alley filled with abandoned cars, overflowing trash bins and cascades of garbage. We weaved our way through the maze of empty warehouses, then turned a corner and ran some more. I had no idea where we were. All the warehouses looked the same. I think we were about three blocks away when we heard the sirens.

 

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